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Chai tea is an Indian drink with a specific spice blend, and, in India, a specific process involving condensed milk. Its actual name is ‘chai masala’, which is Hindi for ‘spiced tea’. When white westerners found it, we straddled the line between ‘exotic’ and ‘palatable to anglophone audiences’, and in doing so, made a phrase redundant in two languages. It would have been fine if we’d called it ‘masala tea’ or ‘tea masala’, or just ‘spiced tea’.

Want to know something crazy? Sugar doesn’t melt; it undergoes thermal decomposition. That may sound like a pedantic distinction, considering we’ve all watched sugar effectively melt into a pool of caramel atop crème brûlée, but the implications are huge—worthy of far more explanation than a mere tl;dr.

Celebrities on Instagram love to hawk weight loss products, and one of the biggest trends is the teatox: Herbal “detoxing” teas that are supposed to help you lose weight naturally. Of course, miracle cures don’t exist, and many of these teas are just laxatives.

Researchers from Iowa State University have developed the unusual new form of synthetic leather using some rather normal ingredients. It’s made in shallow plastic tanks that contain cellulose fibers taken from kombucha tea, along with vinegar and sugar. When a colony of bacteria and yeast is added, the material grows on the top of the liquid’s surface. It can then be harvested and dried and—bingo!—teather! (Actually it’s not called teather, I just made that up. They actually call it “cellulosic fiber.” Teather is more fun.)

What’s odd is that Kangaroo leather is the toughest stuff – high end football (AKA soccer) shoes are made of it. Kangaroos are considered vermin in Australia, so why doesn’t someone kill two birds with one stone? There was talk about selling the meat too…

Coffee, tea, and other caffeinated beverages are enjoyable for the taste alone, but sometimes you might be thinking about their caffeine content more than the flavor. Here are the top 10 things you should know about this wonderful drug and how to use caffeine more efficiently.

I was taught that the darker roasts had less caffeine as it was leeched out by the roasting process, so that milder coffees actually gave you more of a jolt than espresso roasts, if prepared the same way.

Caffeine is known to double the impact of certain pain medications (not unlike the grapefruit effect). For those taking few different medications during the day for chronic pain, the dose can be halved by taking it with coffee. Less drug, more coffee, no downside!

Caffeine has a wide variety of effects in the body. Mechanistically, some of the effects are direct (such as Caffeine acting as an Adenosine Antagonist, the molecule literally blocks the receptor) and others are indirect (any effects on dopamine are ‘downstream’ of the reaction with adenosine, like the latter aspects of a Domino cascade). When tolerance develops to caffeine

Here’s something to think about next time you get one of those “miracle green tea” emails in your inbox: doctors treating an unidentified British teenager say she contracted hepatitis and jaundice as a result of her attempts trying to lose weight by drinking diet green tea. And the scary thing is she’s not the only person to suffer this fate.

The tea is believed to be the vector, not the actual cause. Additives and/or pesticides are believed to be the actual cause, due to overdosing on green tea. Read the directions, when in doubt – ask.

I’ve been there, trying to offset the hunger or desire to eat for various reasons. Rushing does not help, and incrementally making adjustments to your diet will allow you to adopt a new lifestyle easier. There really aren’t shortcuts.